How dead Thai teen met Aussie on beach holiday
New details have emerged after an Australian man arrested trying to leave Thailand and charged with murdering 17-year-old girl.
Source: X
An Australian man accused of killing a Thai teen allegedly spent the next day shopping, dining out and doing laundry while her body was stuffed in a suitcase inside his room for hours.
New details have emerged after Simon Peter Carman was arrested trying to leave Thailand and charged with murdering 17-year-old Thanchanok Donhomla.
The girl was on a lively strip of palm-fringed sand in the seaside city of Pattaya on Wednesday night (local time) when, according to a friend, she met a foreign man and struck up a conversation.
“On the day of the incident, he was out walking when he met the victim,” said Police Colonel Anek Srathongyoo, superintendent of Pattaya City police station.
“They struck up a conversation, decided to continue spending time together, and later returned to his condominium.”
Footage taken by Tunchanok’s friend shows her and Carman walking off hand-in-hand after meeting on the beach strip.
The friend was so concerned that he filmed the pair and later gave the video to police.
Simon Carman and Thanchanok Donhomla walk away together, as filmed by the girl’s friend. Photo: X
SBS Thailand reports that the girl, known affectionately as Nong Cake, sent one last text to her friend.
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“I’ve arrived at [his] apartment. The room is so messy,” the message reportedly stated.
The pair returned to Carman’s apartment early on Thursday. Police say Tunchanok was strangled there.
CCTV footage, released by police, shows a girl in jeans and a taller man in shorts and black sleeveless T-shirt holding hands and walking into a lift about 3.35am on Thursday.
Thai police inspect a suitcase containing the body of a Thai teenage girl. Photo: AAP
Two days later, Thai police said they found the teenager’s naked corpse, stuffed inside a suitcase and dumped in waist-high grass, near a railway track, near the beachfront.
At almost the same time as the body’s discovery early on Saturday, Thai immigration authorities at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport apprehended a middle-aged Australian man as he prepared to board a flight out of the country.
In Pattaya, a popular beach resort known for its colourful night life and an epicentre of illicit sex tourism, police said Carman had made a partial confession.
“He said he did not intend to kill her, but admitted strangling her, causing her death,” Anek told Reuters.
“He stated that they had an argument and, during the altercation, he strangled the woman.”
Simon Peter Carman is accused of murdering Tunchanok Donhomla (left).
Authorities were first alerted of a missing person about 5pm on Friday when a friend of the Tunchanok reported to Pattaya City police station that she had disappeared after being seen walking with a foreign man, according to a police statement issued on Saturday.
But initial leads were thin. “All that was known was that the man took her to a condominium,” the statement said.
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Police scoured CCTV footage and searched an apartment where they found a passport belonging to Carman. They were unable to trace him or Tunchanok.
It was not clear how Carman hoped to leave the country without his passport.
International law enforcement and charities have long raised concerns about sexual exploitation in the area, particularly of children.
Police allege that after an argument that led to Carman strangling Tunchanok, he initially kept her corpse in the suitcase, only later taking it out of the building, police said.
A second CCTV video shows Carman, dressed in similar clothes, dragging out a large black suitcase.
The accused was seen wheeling a suitcase from his building.
Reuters was able to confirm the location from the building, road layout, elevator and floor patterns, which matched archive and satellite images.
The suitcase was verified to be the same one found by Thai police later, containing the victim’s body.
Anek said autopsy results were still pending and investigators continued to gather evidence, which would be submitted to prosecutors who would decide on the indictment.
Now in custody, Carman has been charged with intentional murder, concealing a corpse, moving or destroying a corpse and abduction of a minor for indecent purposes, according to Thai police.
Reuters was unable to reach Carman for comment, and police said he had not yet appointed a lawyer.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was providing consular assistance to an Australian detained in Thailand and declined to comment further.
Tunchanok’s stepmother, Oradee Bussarakum, said when they saw news coverage of the suitcase they feared the worst.
“We were scared,” she said.
“We just hoped it wouldn’t turn out the way we feared. Now our eyes are swollen from crying.”
-with AAP
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